Corned Beef and Cabbage (A day late and a dollar short)

On St. Patrick's Day, we traditionally have corned beef and cabbage, which for most of us is the signature Irish dish.

When Julie and I visited Ireland, I looked forward to enjoying this dish in its native land to see if it would compare favorably with my mother's cooking.  It turned out that I never found a restaurant serving corned beef.

What we did find were lots of restaurants serving potatoes.  In fact, potatoes came on the side of every dish.  If we had stir fry with brown rice, it would come with a side of french fries.

I came away realizing that potatoes were the real food of Ireland, and my mom used to include potatoes with her corned beef and cabbage.  She didn't just throw red potatoes into an Irish stew of cabbage and carrots.  She would separately boil potatoes and then make mashed potatoes, which were really good with cabbage over the top of them.  Mmmmm! 

Well, I thought, potatoes for  Ireland makes sense.  After all, there was the famous potato famine that brought such hard conditions there.

The potato, then, has been the foundation of the Irish diet from time immemorial, I thought.  But this morning, I discovered something new.  It turns out that while Europeans introduced, among other things, livestock to the new world, which eventually led to the images we have of Native Americans skillfully riding horses bareback across the plains despite the fact that they didn't have horses until the Europeans arrived.  The humble potato was an American product that was brought back to the Old World by Spanish explorers, which of course resulted in the famed french fries of the Irish named American company McDonald's becoming ubiquitous throughout the world during my generation.

Once again, I seem to have gotten pretty far off the topic, but it is really pretty easy to make corned beef and cabbage, or at least it is if you have a large supermarket like Ralph's nearby. Because I am one of those antiquated folks who subscribes to a printed newspaper, I am able to peruse ads for grocery stores on Tuesday mornings for sales that start on Wednesday. I actually find that I save far more money perusing Daily Breeze ads on this one day than the newspaper costs for a month of delivery.  Factor in the weekend ads for department stores like Kohl's, and I can't understand why everyone doesn't get daily newspapers.

I know, too many words saying too little about cooking corned beef. In any case, among the different stores, Ralph's had the lowest priced corned beef, Shannon's "point cut." Point cut means it will have more fat, usually hidden behind white plastic on the bottom, than flat cut, which some consider the better value, definitely requires less fat-trimming and is what my mother used to buy. In this case, the flat cut next to the point cut at Ralph's was three times the price, and because my wife doesn't even like the smell of it cooking, I figured I'd go with the cheaper point cut.

The point cut has a deeper profile, so covering it with water would have required filling the pot to the brim, which would have eventually overflowed onto the stovetop.  I simply turned it over a couple of times while cooking.  Basically, all you do is put the corned beef in the pot, pour in the seasoning mix (Shannon's includes in the package), add water and bring to a boil.  I actually keep the cover on most of the time, and while not at a full boil, the water definitely still bubbles, meaning that you have to add water periodically, a lesson I could have used to avert my recent noodles fiasco.

While 2 1/2 hours should do it, I cooked it more like 3 hours, because of needing to turn the meat.  Before going on a walk along the beach with Julie, I took the corned beef out of the water and threw in some carrots.  Cooking "stinky" corned beef was marginally acceptable, but cooking cabbage is something I only do when Julie is out of town on a business trip, because she finds that smell totally disgusting....although of course it is quite healthy and delicious.  To add cabbage, just cut a head into quarters and put it in the water to boil for 15 minutes, along with carrots and other root vegetables. If you're making potatoes in the stew, you probably should cook them longer, maybe adding them to the last half hour of the corned beef cooking.  To be perfectly honest, the carrots weren't that good, possibly because I turned off the water and just let them sit in it as it cooled rather than actually boiling them.

The great news is that with one pot, this is a very easy to clean meal.  Just wash the pot with hot water and soap.

An important part of making a corned beef sandwich is the condiments.  I recommend following Mom's recipe: spread mayonaise on the bread (she always used seedless Jewish rye, but low carb wheat bread tastes good too), and then spread an equal amount of mustard on, so that the two mix togehter.  It is delicious.  Serve the cabbage, potatoes and any other vegetables on the side.